Steinbrenner Case Shows That Even The Big Guys Get Bamboozled

By getting burned in an apparent tax-shelter swindle, George Steinbrenner seems hellbent on proving that he doesn't know any more about investments than he does about baseball. Or does he?

Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees owner who can neither settle on a manager for very long nor buy a national championship, recently won a non- binding jury verdict for more than $23 million in a securities-fraud case. That figure isn't too bad, considering that he lost only $6.61 million.

The Yankees owner contends that he lost the money in one of those investments that were the rage of the decade: limited partnerships. According to Steinbrenner, he was tricked into fraudulent investments in oil, gas and coal. Florida law states that Steinbrenner is entitled to recover three times his losses. A Tampa jury threw in another $2.9 million plus attorney's fees.

Steinbrenner obviously has a lot of egg on his face for getting sucker punched when Billy Martin was nowhere in sight. But besides that, he isn't out of the woods yet. In legalese, ''non-binding'' means that those who ripped off George don't necessarily have to pay up in cash. Lawyers for each side will get together and attempt to come up with a settlement.

Meanwhile, the likelihood of the defendants having the money to pay up is about the same as the likelihood that the Orlando Magic will win the National Basketball Association title this year.

Steinbrenner is nobody's dumbbell in either baseball or business. In addition to owning the Yankees, Steinbrenner is the principal owner of American Ship Building Co. of Tampa.

His tale of woe just serves to point up a very big problem being faced by more and more investors. If an astute, educated, streetwise multimillionaire like Steinbrenner can't tell the good deals from the bad ones and can't sort out legitimate investments from bogus ones, what chance does the average investor have of protecting himself from unscrupulous people?

Steinbrenner's lawyer won the first round of the five-year ordeal by convincing the jury that the defendants ''misrepresented the profitability of the investment.''

That opens a can of worms: If everybody recovered three times their losses back anybody who misrepresented the profitability of investments, it would make sense to seek out bum investments.

Most of us have neither Steinbrenner's millions, the staying power to wait five years for a court decision nor the opportunity to hire a high- powered lawyer like Bernard Dempsey to help us with our causes.

A number of people who have gotten burned in Florida swindles in recent years have just about given up on finding a legal champion like Steinbrenner's lawyer, Bernard Dempsey. Some are considering hiring someone more like a Jack Dempsey (no relation) to settle their scores. (Bernard Dempsey earned his reputation by busting up Harlan Blackburn's Florida gambling empire while serving as a federal prosecutor; Jack Dempsey found fame by busting up people.)

Justice works so slowly in investment-fraud cases, it seems, that even those who eventually are found guilty often just change the name of the scam or move to another state and continue with business as usual.

The situation is so bad, in fact, that one wonders whether those people in charge of the enforcement of state securities laws ever heard of long- distance telephone service.

If Steinbrenner can collect his three-for-one bounty, there ought to be a way for poorer people to get back their life savings lost through scams that are even more blatantly fraudulent.